I live on a street where many of the homes are owned by people who do not inhabit them full-time. When the pandemic necessitated escape from the city, many moved into their second homes for those long months.
With a deep need to get out of our houses during that lonely time, we all walked, many with dogs, no matter the weather. Standing carefully apart from my new neighbors, I enjoyed conversations with people I’d never even seen before—day after day, in summer sun and winter cold, we exchanged glimpses of different lives, shared struggles, excitement about first vaccines, hope for release from masks and quarantines, fury over the political gamesmanship in the White House.
The pandemic connected us.
“What great people,” I thought. “I want to get to know them better. I want them to get to know each other, and the full-timers on our street.”
So, the seed of an idea began forming in my mind.
“Let’s have a block party,” I thought, mentioning it to my husband who thought it a great idea, and another friend who wanted to co-host it with me. We began planning months in advance, making lists, sending out email blasts, imagining what we’d need to supply and what neighbors would need to bring.
I told friends about our plans. One of them responded:
How wonderful that you’re organizing the block party—that’s such a lovely thing to do. Communities seem a bit frazzled, these days, and to form and nourish them seems extraordinary and a blessing to all who participate.
And that’s what it turned out to be—a blessing. The long tables we’d set out filled quickly with scrumptious summer salads, all manner of desserts and hors oeuvres, and bottles of wine and prosecco crowded the beer and seltzer we’d provided in ice-filled garden buckets. Neighbors in colorful summer clothes streamed into our still-green yard, donned their name tags, and quickly began to mingle, talking, laughing drinking, and eating until dark. Our son, who’s bought the property contiguous to us, came with his wife and one of his three sons to meet all who will soon become neighbors—a special thrill.
“Let’s do it again!” was a nearly universal response, and we surely will.
But meanwhile, the weave of connections continues—we’re having drinks and dinners with each other, sharing walks, waving to each other on the street-- new friends and old now linked by a common bond -- our neighborhood.
It feels great.
I have been reflecting on my friend’s comments about the frazzling of communities these days and the importance of nourishing them, so grateful that we were able to do that, and will continue to.
We need the connectedness neighborhoods can offer, especially in the face of so much disconnectedness in our world today.
And I’ve been thinking about other neighborhoods—the ones I’ve lived in, and how important they’ve been in nurturing me. I grew up on a street where everyone knew each other, a kind of “Leave it to Beaver” neighborhood, in which none of the mothers worked outside the home and all the fathers did. We kids played in each other’s yards and porches, our mothers convened for coffee and canvassing the street for cancer and polio drives, parents gathered for steak and scotch on each other’s backyard terraces. Everyone went to church.
Our similarities joined us--it was comforting, supportive.
That was true also in the university community I lived in for several years while my husband was a medical resident. Since our husbands were never home, we wives turned to each other for sustenance and companionship. We all had young children, no money, and lots of time. In the warm months, we pulled our lawn chairs together, watching our children interact, shared simple lunches and dinners. In the winter, we were in and out of each other’s small apartments, hosting birthday parties, toddler play dates, drinking lots of coffee. No one ever needed a babysitter—we all took each other’s kids for the rare times we went out.
We were, quite simply, there for each other.
There are other kinds of neighborhoods, too. Emotional neighborhoods. Spiritual neighborhoods. Creative neighborhoods. Every year, I’ve been fortunate enough to get a fellowship for a writing residency, and I’ve thrived in those experiences, surrounded with others who are similarly passionate about writing, art, and music. I’ve just returned from an 8-day mindfulness retreat, immersed in the silent energy of what Buddhists call “sangha,” a likeminded spiritual community. Friendship circles, families, church, summer camp, team sports, yes even political parties, provide what I think of as emotional neighborhoods—a coming together of people who feel similarly about issues and find solace in sharing their views and thoughts.
I suppose in some way, I’m trying to create a kind of neighborhood with these blog posts. Reaching out with my reflections on topics that might catch your interest, resonate with your experience or feelings, I’m attempting to link you, my readers, together.
“Only connect…live in fragments no longer” (E.M. Forster).
It makes more sense than anything else I can think of right now.
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National Neighborhood Day is the third Sunday in September each year: https://nationaltoday.com/national-neighbor-day/ (who knew?) Think about organizing something on your street, block, apartment building, condominium, or any other gathering place you’re involved with. So worth it!
Please tune in to a conversation I’ll be having with my dear friend Martha Anne Toll about her debut novel, The Three Muses, “an affecting chamber piece with plenty to say about art, trauma, and healing” (Kirkus Reviews), on September 28 at 7:00. -https://www.oblongbooks.com/event/online-martha-ann-toll-three-muses